1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method and apparatus for producing terry cloth toweling materials on a warp knitting machine.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Apparatus and methods for producing towel materials, especially terry cloth towels having non-looped transfer stripes, are known to those of ordinary skill in the art. Typical prior art apparatus and methods, however, required the use of so-called pattern change mechanisms. According to such prior art techniques the pattern was typically changed from the production of ware having loop stitches to ware without loop stitches by the displacement of appropriate guide bars by means of alteration of the pattern. Generally, the ratio of looped stitches to unlooped stitches is very great, usually in the order of fifty to one. This was so since the unlooped portions constituted a very small portion of the whole of the fabric. In order to achieve this ratio by conventional means it was usually necessary to employ extremely long pattern chains in order to provide the desired ratio. The use of such long patterned chains was of course extremely expensive as well as being mechanically bulky and inefficient. A further disadvantage of the aforedescribed traditional method lay in the fact that changing from looped to unlooped stitches and vice versa naturally altered the thread consumption rate of the machine. Therefore, the take off speed of the thread beams had to be modified for stitch change.
Machinery is described in the book "WARP KNITTING TECHNOLOGY" by D. F. Paling, Columbine Press Ltd., Copyright 1970, which could be adopted and modified to perform a similar function. However, the adaptation of such equipment would not produce machinery which would operate better than the invention described herein.
For these and other reasons a solution was sought which would dispense with the necessity of using long pattern chains.